SmugMug Statistics
onethumb
Administrators Posts: 1,269 Major grins
UPDATE 6-15-2006: They're back!
Hi everyone, I know we've posted a few times and answered plenty of emails about this, but here's a single spot to find the answer:
- Yes, statistics are currently shut off. One of our customers, Rafael Nadal, is currently winning matches left and right at the French Open. Every time he does, he gets a crippling amount of traffic to his photos and it was causing our statistics stuff to cause outages for other customers.
- Yes, we know you like your statistics. We do too, and we're working hard to try to bring them back.
- The honest answer is we weren't prepared to have a worldwide celebrity hitting our system quite so hard, and we thought it was more important that your photos be available without statistics than not available with them.
- We're also working on a way to serve photos from more than one geographic location, so that those on the East Coast and Europe don't have to get photos from the West Coast each time. These issues are related because they make statistics tracking much more difficult.
- As a result, there's a high likelihood of statistics being a less up-to-the-second than they used to be. It's likely that they'll be delayed a few days at any given time as we import logging data from other locations, rather than log the traffic in realtime as we've been doing.
- The silver lining in this cloud is that while statistics are off, every SmugMug customer has unlimited bandwidth. Enjoy.
We don't have an ETA on a fix just yet, but I wanted everyone to know that we are working hard on the problem and know that it's a big priority. Our #1 priority, though, is to keep your photos online and viewable so your friends, family, and customers can get access to them.
Read the 6-11-06 update
Thanks,
Don
Hi everyone, I know we've posted a few times and answered plenty of emails about this, but here's a single spot to find the answer:
- Yes, statistics are currently shut off. One of our customers, Rafael Nadal, is currently winning matches left and right at the French Open. Every time he does, he gets a crippling amount of traffic to his photos and it was causing our statistics stuff to cause outages for other customers.
- Yes, we know you like your statistics. We do too, and we're working hard to try to bring them back.
- The honest answer is we weren't prepared to have a worldwide celebrity hitting our system quite so hard, and we thought it was more important that your photos be available without statistics than not available with them.
- We're also working on a way to serve photos from more than one geographic location, so that those on the East Coast and Europe don't have to get photos from the West Coast each time. These issues are related because they make statistics tracking much more difficult.
- As a result, there's a high likelihood of statistics being a less up-to-the-second than they used to be. It's likely that they'll be delayed a few days at any given time as we import logging data from other locations, rather than log the traffic in realtime as we've been doing.
- The silver lining in this cloud is that while statistics are off, every SmugMug customer has unlimited bandwidth. Enjoy.
We don't have an ETA on a fix just yet, but I wanted everyone to know that we are working hard on the problem and know that it's a big priority. Our #1 priority, though, is to keep your photos online and viewable so your friends, family, and customers can get access to them.
Read the 6-11-06 update
Thanks,
Don
0
Comments
(I really hope Nadal's bills end up funding the system changes you guys are contemplating...)
j
james calder photography
Thank you for explaining. Don't suppose you can just turn his statistics off and leave everyone else's on
Smug since 2006
SmugMug Help
PhotoscapeDesign
WOW! What a really good idea!. I bet One Thumb never though of that.
HAAA!
(Meant to be sarcastic - not meant to be mean)
Smug since 2006
SmugMug Help
PhotoscapeDesign
I gotta say that I thought the same thing, and it wasn't a sarcastic thought.
That idea sounds great but I imagine that the software cannot do it. It might take special programming.
My concern is that if this is one member whom has a created a problem for the masses, what says that this could not happen to others who would, not intentional, create a similar situation?
I would hate to see delays, like days, of current stats - it's good to know what is being looked at and what should be deleted from a gallery.
My own personal opinion.
Hey guys, I guess I've gotta take some blame for the crippling amount of traffic . I just checked my control panel and I've had 23 hits this month.
It did promt me to install statcounter which does have some interesting stats but I prefer the stats that Smugmug has.
www.baja.smugmug.com
I thought my fans forgot about my site. :cry But things happen and as usual I was wrong on my first thought, they still like me
I obviously keeping the site online and serving images is the #1 priority, but I'm hoping restoring the statistics is #1.5. While the majority of the smugmug population probably could care less about stats, statistics are a basic business requirement for those hosting for-profit event galleries.
I'm a part-time wedding photog and I just spent weeks uploading my previous events to SM in preparation of switching from another service. Last weekend I sent my first "SM bride" her gallery, and now have no data on its usage. Today I receive an email that she finally looked at them... What are the most viewed, and probably most liked, images? They should be featured to increase sales... Has she forwarded the link to others? If I email the link to a list of people whom attended the wedding, what type of response will there be? Are people willing to browse through pages and pages of thumbnails or does view drop off after 2-3 pages? If the images are broken down into categories is the retention rate better? I'm sure there are a million other questions, but my point is the stats aren't just a nice thing to have, they're a significant part of a marketing strategy.
While its obvious the system wasn't designed to handle the current scenario, it's been a week I'm a bit discouraged a fix isn't forthcoming. My non-photog job is administering a very large MS Exchange server farm. If we had a pre-existing feature that was suddenly disabled due to capacity and after a week had no restoration plan or ETA, I'd be getting my Monster resume up to date. That may sound harsh, but I guess **where I'm comming from** a week is an extremely long time to resovle a system issue.
I agree with the previous poster that its a bit disconcerting that one user can so solely consume the system that features have to be disabled for everyone else. While I'm sure in the long run it's benefical for SM to service the VIP customer, in the short run its the masses paying the price. Maybe it's already happened, but I can only imagine if some spammer started to use SM to host thier latest "refinance now!" jpeg in an html email... A monthly PB of bandwidth is a dangerous thing if there's no burst limit other then the systems raw capacity. (Obviously I don't know if this is the case or not, just speculating based on the current events)
I also agree with the previous posting in that asynchronous logging of stats is bad mojo. We are the "want it yesterday" society and it would be frustrating to have to wait till Wed to see Mon stats. Maybe an "update my stats now" button or update them daily? But I do agree late stats are of course better then no stats.
Well I'm hoping there was at least one logical point in my rambling, as I'm too sleep deprived to re-read it... Please remember everyting is just my personal option and take it all with a 2AM grain of salt. Maybe it will ward off some flames if I do mention that overall I've been very pleased with SM. It's just an unfortunate coincidence that what I think is a core gallery feature is broken just when I went live with my SM site...
And oh, if you're out there Rafael Nadal, if you could throw the next match to save the stats.... that would be grrrrreaaat. Mmmm-kay.
-Jeremy
http://photos.geibphotography.com
I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own - Adam Savage
I just got Google analytics installed and it's impressive.
Statcounter
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1092684
http://www.statcounter.com/
Google Analytics
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1092794
http://www.google.com/analytics/
-Scott
scwalter.smugmug.com
Don,
Thanks for the update,
Although i've also had statcounter running for about 2 months now,
it would be VERY HELPFUL to know when (date / time ) the Smug Stats went offline... so as I can recreate my end of last month, by going into my statcounter logs ( been saving all as pdf's - tedious but looks like it will pay off now .... if I can get the date / time)
Thanks,
rich
ps: the thread mentioned above is all you need to add statcounter,
( Thanks Mike Lane
the trick since it only offers last 100 pageloads ( for free ) is to save as pdf each 100 or they drop off as more come in (they don't yet offer downloads)
or pay a fee for 1100 pageload capacity and save as pdfs, has been my solution
http://rich56k.smugmug.com
Member: ASMP; EP; NPPA; CPS
As a web application/database designer/implementor, I think the problem is that for each retrieved image, SmugMug has to do an update in the database (increase the counter for the bandwidth, the number of times the images is retrieved, etc.). This demands a lot from the database, as this cannot be done in parallel for all retrievers of the pictures. It seems that the database cannot cope with this for really large amounts of retrievals.
In case Smugmug will distribute the pictures over the world, the access counters will be distributed as well. Hence, they have to be retrieved from all over the world (all servers actually) and summed up to give you complete statistics. The best practice is to do this replication only a few times a day. This means your status counters won't be up-to-date until the information is gathered from all servers. I think this won't be much of a problem for most users as they probably only have a 'local' audience.
Sorry, but I just couldn't resist giving my opinion.
Marc
May 30
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
1. As others have said, it's troubling that one person's traffic can bring the whole site down.
2. For me personally, the close-to-real-time statistics are a big plus of the site. A several day delay would be a big minus.
3. The Smugmug stats are much better than the third-party solutions. The Google solution seems to require an invitation, which might not be forthcoming any time soon.
I know that Smugmug isn't a democracy, but I also know that you guys pay close attention to your users' needs and desires. Sounds like the statistics outage is a big deal for a lot of people. Like another poster, I hope that restoration of statistics (close to realtime) is a close-to-top priority.
Mitch
TIA
-Jeremy
http://photos.geibphotography.com
Which type of account do you need to install analytics or statcounter. It seems like standard accounts don't have the capability (but correct me if I'm wrong).
Thanks!
Jimmy
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
The service has not improved even with the stats shut off. Load time...Up load time ect.
This is a great site and I think it will be fixed the question is when?
We had just put to gether a program using several different photos structures to see which one got the most hits. This was on our regular coverage. We had over 40 hrs planning and set up in this.
We to covered the Charlotte Coke 600 One of the first NASCAR coverage’s that our site has done.
We had 23 Clients lined up to look at it, and what kind of reception (views) it got with in the racing community that I am working. (Short Track)
Smiles I spent a lot of $$$ and time lining up those prospective clients and I really look like a fool.
I had over 400,000 views on our photos in May with 22% click rate.
Getting Nascar Press Passes is very hard and I used the stats from previous coverages to get this done
I have NONE (stats) to give to Nascar to get future access.
Again it is a wonerful site. I just wanted you to know how "little things" that did not mean anything to you, effected others.
Roger Bathe
www.LuvRacin.com
I know it's probably beginning to sound like a broken record to the Smugmug folks who are probably just as frustrated as we are by not having this service available, but one of the things I truly enjoy about Smugmug has always been the ability to look at what my visitors are seeing so I can tailor future photo shoots to their preferences. I posted a ton of photos just before the hit counter went down and I'm totally in the dark about how they were received.
All I can say is that until this little incident, Smugmug has been great, and I'm very disappointed that the original "day or two" email I received from them has turned into more than a week, with no indication as to when it will eventually be solved.
I know you're doing your best, but do it faster, please.
Thanks!
www.ivarborst.nl & smugmug
BTW...another idea...you might send out a curtosey email instead of having us email you to ask...I did yesterday but just finally see the notice on my stats today.
Hi Andy,
I know you guys are doing everything possible to rectify the stats situation,
however, i must ask for the final piece to my puzzle, which is the time of day on May 30 we went offline (or at least am/pm).
Thanks for your patience and continued help with my problems,
your expertise is / has been instrumental in me getting my site up to where it is and I can't thank you ( and the Dgrin pros ) enough,
And your diplomacy in view of the current situation is commendable,
rich
http://rich56k.smugmug.com
Member: ASMP; EP; NPPA; CPS
Hi Rich
Thanks
I do not know the exact time, I'll try and find out.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Really why the hell don't you do it this way or at least explane why you refuse to
Absolutely well stated;.and thank you for saying it. Greg.
but this does put a damper on things as my first gallery was a trip to china from various angles and was really hoping to get feedback on what was getting viewed the most; to see where i was most successful in my photography. a day after i joined stats went down
my one email to customer service the response was super fast and very accomodating, in regards to another minor issue that was on my end not smugmugs.
i hope this gets fixed soon. this is very important to me and my gf who also signed up right after i showed her this great site. keeping track of views is definitely a key feature for us.
Gear
*Canon 40D: 17-55IS - 70-300IS - 100mm Macro - Sigma 10-20EX
*Imagination
Thank you so much for letting us know what was up.
And to the rest of you that are unhappy with the stats being down, I highly recommend Statcounter and I've heard great things about Google Analytics!
Andi
www.tippiepics.com